Following the recent announcement of Forrester’s Voice of the Customer winners and while we wait for the release of a new Forrester book on Outside-In thinking, it seemed an opportune moment to look at the IT service desk from the perspective of its customers (or end users if you are still that way inclined). So the main body of this blog has been written by such a customer – they don’t work in IT they are just heavily dependent upon IT to do their job. This is how they feel …

Pre-service desk - old skool IT support seemed to work

It feels as though life was much easier before the service desk was introduced into my life. One “IT guy” supported circa 100 staff and was accessible via phone, email, IM, and by simply walking across the office floor. Times change, businesses grow, and technology becomes more complex and so we have to move on. The local (and friendly) “IT guy” gets replaced by a faceless IT team, usually locked-up in the basement floor, and suddenly we have to jump through a series of hoops to get our IT queries answered. There are incidents, requests, catalogs, and tickets, and all my colleagues and I want to know is “Why can’t I log into my email?” and “Can you fix it quickly, please?”

A recent Forrester report helps IT infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders understand the business and IT impact of service management and automation (SMA). While both IT service management (ITSM) and automation can be used effectively in isolation, I&O organizations should be seeking to use them in tandem for an "amplified" business impact.

The General Benefits Of Service Management And Automation

The general benefits of SMA can be divided between the I&O organization and the business, though these benefits often overlap:

While SMA is much more than the adoption of IT infrastructure library (ITIL), the ITSM best practice framework, thinking and processes — ITIL's benefits are quite reflective of the general benefits of broader SMA. In a survey of 491 members of the USA chapter of the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), Forrester found that organizations which adopted ITIL experience the following benefits:

Improved staff productivity that allows the business to become more competitive (85%).

Heightened quality of service that improves business uptime and customer experience (83%).

Reduced operational costs to reinvest in new and innovative initiatives (41%).

In a recent Forrester report — Develop Your Service Management And Automation Balanced Scorecard — I highlight some of the common mistakes made when designing and implementing infrastructure & operations (I&O) metrics. This metric “inappropriateness” is a common issue, but there are still many I&O organizations that don’t realize that they potentially have the wrong set of metrics. So, consider the following:

When it comes to metrics, I&O is not always entirely sure what it’s doing or why. We often create metrics because we feel that we “should” rather than because we have definite reasons to capture and analyze data and consider performance against targets. Ask yourself: “Why do we want or need metrics?” Do your metrics deliver against this? You won’t be alone if they don’t.

Metrics are commonly viewed as an output in their own right. Far too many I&O organizations see metrics as the final output rather than as an input into something else, such as business conversations about services or improvement activity. The metrics become a “corporate game” where all that matters is that you’ve met or exceeded your targets. Metrics reporting should see the bigger picture and drive improvement.